Films & Schedules
- Hunger

Sat, Feb 7, 2009at 8:30 PM (WH)

Wed, Feb 11, 2009at 8:30 PM (WH)

Hunger

DIRECTOR: Steve McQueen - Great Britain

Turner Prize-winning video artist McQueen won the Camera d'Or (Best First Film) at Cannes Film Festival for Hunger, a provocative exploration of the politics of torture and the yearning for spiritual transcendence. Set in Belfast's Maze Prison, the film is an interpretation of the highly emotive events surrounding the 1981 Irish Republican Army hunger strike, led by Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender). Hunger plunges us into the world of the infamous H-blocks, a hellish place for prisoners and guards alike. Their bodies are the prisoners' only weapons, and after a new round of humiliation and violence, Sands decides to start a hunger strike to continue the fight for political prisoner status for the Irish Republican internees. Rigorous, spare and visceral, the film offers a compelling study of people in extreme circumstances resorting to extreme measures, and is seared into the mind by unforgettable performances from Michael Fassbinder and Liam Cunningham.